A Different Dance
by Callistee
Summary: Aang is found in the iceberg too late. Ozai becomes Phoenix King and his daughter the Fire Lord. AU, eventual Zutara .
1. Arc I: sifting through the snow

_To the ends of this lost world_

_You have marched and you have sworn_

_To a tainted crown of thorns_

_~Whereabouts Unknown, Rise Against_

* * *

Arc I: Whereabouts Unknown

* * *

-sifting through the snow-

* * *

"Stop playing around," Sokka hisses. Katara lets her bubble of water hover over her brother's head for a heartbeat before the water - the fish swimming inside included - drops onto his head.

"I actually _caught _something, Master Fish-catcher," Katara says, resisting the urge to stick her tongue out at him. At nearly seventeen, she supposes she shouldn't ever feel the need to make faces at her older brother, _but that's Sokka for you_, she supposes.

"Well, just stop with your water magic and let me spear that fi-"

"It's not water magic!"

"What do you want me to call it then? Water voodoo?"

"Water_bending _would suffice, thank you ver-"

"Katara! The fish is getting awa- hey! You just pushed it further away!"

"I wouldn't want the poor fish to lose brain cells like I am just by being _near _you."

"Why do you care about the fish's intelli-"

"Sokka, did you see that?"

As Sokka continues to huff, and Katara repeats her question, with a note of something creeping into her voice that makes Sokka pause and scan the horizon.

"I don't see anything."

"I could've sworn I saw red," Katara says softly, tendrils of fear running through her and gripping her organs.

"No." Sokka's eyes have gone wide and he scans the horizon again, actually looking this time. Blots of black and dots of orange and red draw slowly, slowly closer.

The color red has never done anything good for Katara. Red is the color of blood. Red is the color the man who killed her mother was wearing. Red is the color of fire.

"Take us back to shore." Sokka shakes Katara roughly when he sees her start to go rigid. "Now, Katara!"

Katara closes her eyes briefly and takes a deep breath to steady herself before pushing back on the water with both hands. Sokka stabs his spear into the ice and crouches, gripping the spear to avoid being flung into the water. The slab of ice they'd been using as a raft is propelled back to shore. Sokka steps off the ice and onto the tundra quickly, pulling Katara along with him. Katara feels like her veins have been iced over and her movements are twice as slow as they would usually be.

"Melt the ice. If they pass by here they'll notice it's unnatural," Sokka says curtly to his sister. He pulls his spear out of the ice and Katara nods. In a swooping downwards gesture the makeshift raft is dispersed into the ocean.

"Should I-" Katara starts, and Sokka quickly cuts her off.

"Don't try to bend us a ice mobile or something. We're close enough to the village."

They both break into a run. The frozen tundra gives away to sloping hills of snow and ice, but they both push on; Katara disrupting the snow behind them every so often to cover their tracks. When they finally arrive at the village, pink-faced and breathing hard, at least a dozen people rush towards them. Sokka catches his breath after a few moments and straightens up, waving a hand to silence everyone.

"We saw Fire Nation ships."

Of course, since the past three years, it's no longer been the Fire Nation, but the Phoenix Empire, ruled by Phoenix King Ozai.

"Ozai's finally decided to get rid of us?" one of the women asks, grabbing her son's hand.

"Looks like it," Sokka says grimly. The Southern Water Tribe - nothing but a group of old women, mothers, and young children with tents arranged in a semi-circle - had been left alone after the last Southern Raid that had failed to kill Katara, the real target, and instead took her mother. The rest of the Hundred Year War had passed by with the Fire Nation acting as if the Southern Water Tribe didn't even exist_. _A twenty something group of women and children with one boy who thinks he's a warrior and a waterbender who can barely catch fish (a waterbender that the Fire Nation thought they had killed) didn't exactly terrify.

Now, though, Katara thinks that Sokka's as good of a warrior as any of the men that left to the Hundred Year War, and Gran-gran tells her that she's at least half as good as the master waterbenders captured in the early Southern Raids.

"Why now?" someone else asks, and murmuring starts up; all of the women reach for their children.

Gran-gran pokes her way from the back of the group to the front. "It doesn't matter," she says, and glances at Sokka. He nods. "We're going into lockdown."

"Immediately start making preparations," Katara says to the suddenly quiet tribe. She musters as much strength as she can into her words. "We're leaving in twenty minutes."

Everyone knows the procedure by heart, having practiced every month on Sokka's orders. There was always a lot of grumbling involved but as everyone now swiftly packs up the tents, necessary blankets, clothes, and food, Katara thinks that it was the best idea Sokka ever had. Within fifteen minutes, everyone is shouldering huge tiger seal packs.

"Let's go!" Sokka shouts, starting the procession towards their designated safe area. Katara hangs back for a few minutes, melting the ice barriers that are not so much for keeping Fire Nation as for keeping the tribe's children from getting lost. She makes two swooping arcs with her arms and then raises both of them, causing the top layer of snow to flutter into the air. Katara lets the flakes hang there for a few heartbeats before she slowly lowers her hands. The snow settles and all traces of the village are covered.

"Katara! Hurry up!" Sokka calls. Black flakes of snow are starting to blow their way, and cold fear seizes Katara's heart. Suddenly Katara is eight years old and hears her mother telling her to go get Dad, _I'll be alright_, _everything is okay_, sees the Fire Nation soldiers fighting off the tribe's men, feels the ashen snow settle on her hair-

-and then hears Sokka calling her name again. Katara doesn't bother picking off the black flakes that have fluttered onto her head and she turns and runs to catch up to the other villagers. Everyone moves on silently, looking over their shoulders with concern every so often, and Katara walks backwards practically the whole time, manipulating the snow to cover their trail. She feels someone bump into her leg just as the latest stretch of snow is floating back to the ground.

"Katara?"

The ground becomes bumpier and there are small, jutting structures of ice starting to appear in their path. The children call this place the Forest of Teeth.

"Yeah, Essa?"

"The Fire Nation won't kill my mommy, right?"

Essa is the youngest of the children at seven, and although she's smarter than she should be for her age, she still lacks inhibition. Essa realizes her mistake and quickly tries to amend with a meek, "Sorry, Katara, I shouldn't say that to you."

"It's okay, Essa," Katara says to the little girl, forcing a smile, "your mother's very strong and can protect herself, and me and Sokka will be there too. Your mother will be safe."

Katara will not let another child end up like her, and Essa is more similar to Katara than the little girl realizes. Katara watches as the snow flutters unnaturally fast when Essa waves her arms.

She feels Essa hug her legs just as they enter the shadow of a small mountain-like structure of ice. It's not the biggest ice formation in the Forest of Teeth, but still big enough to shelter everyone. Sokka, ever the strategizer, had argued that taking refuge under the biggest possible ice mountain would be too obvious.

"Everyone, take your places!" he shouts from the head of the group. "Only light unpacking. Measure out rationed portions for about a week. We don't know how long the Fire Nation will be here." Everyone scatters and Essa runs off to join her mother, leaving only Sokka and Katara standing across from each other.

"Be careful," Sokka says to her. "And remember-"

"-to only reveal my bending when absolutely necessary," Katara finishes for him. "I know."

* * *

"You peasants thought you could hide from us."

The lazy, self-assured voice comes from somewhere outside of their enclosure. Everyone's expressions tighten and harden, and all of the women reach for their weapons. Katara wants to laugh. She knows they're all decent fighters, but if the Fire Nation found them in the Forest of Teeth - within two hours, no less - then the tribe may as well be extinct.

Katara used to know hope but now her minds automatically thinks of what will happen to them. Will the tribe be killed on the spot? Burned slowly? Taken as slaves? With an insane father-daughter pair commanding these soldiers, they've no doubt been given creative ideas to deal with prisoners.

Katara hears several pairs of soft footsteps against the snow, so quiet that she's sure it's something she only picks up on because of her waterbending. She feels her heart start to pump erratically in her chest. Whoever it is moves silently towards the right and draws closer and closer to the tribe's hideout. Katara crouches lower into her fighting stance. There are one; two more collective steps, and then they all completely stop.

A whole wall of ice shatters inwards.

There's a battle cry from Sokka and all of the tribe's women charge forward, various weapons clutched in their hands.

As the icy mist from the fragmented wall clears the tribespeople meet the first line of Fire Nation soldiers. The leader of the soldiers, a girl - probably only a few years older than Sokka - with long, dark hair in a partial topknot, bursts out laughing.

Katara grips her spear more tightly and pushes on with the rest of her people. The blur of blue and red lasts only for a few minutes before everyone but Katara and Sokka have their hands bound behind their backs with handcuffs made from rock. The Fire Nation soldiers drag out the children from their hiding spots and gesture for a small group of men in green to bind their hands.

Katara and Sokka stand back to back, weapons held out towards the soldiers pressing in on them in a circle.

"Drop your weapons," one of them says gruffly. Katara meets Sokka's eye for a moment and she sees resignation. Her spear hits the snow seconds after Sokka's boomerang falls. Two earthbenders fall out of formation to secure their hands behind their backs.

"Captain June?" the soldier with the gruff voice says.

"Well, that was easy," the girl says, amusement flickering in her eyes. "We thought you might have bigger numbers, or just put up a better fight, I guess. The Fire Lord even insisted we bring along the Dai Li." She gestures towards the earthbenders and then pets the animal she's riding on. "Good thing I talked her out of bringing along more shirsus. Nyla was more than enough."

Katara looks around nervously. While the women have their hands bound like herself, the soldiers all have knifes trained at the bases of the children's throats. Katara clenches her teeth and glares at this Captain June, willing her to stop talking nonsense and get to the point. June leisurely gets off her shirsu.

"Now, which one of you is the last waterbender?"

Everyone in the tribe is careful not to look at Katara. Katara's heart starts beating faster in alarm. The Fire Nation is supposed think they killed the last waterbender when that soldier took Kya's life.

"My mother was the last waterbender," Sokka says, his voice fierce. "Your soldiers _killed _her in the last Southern Raid!"

Katara's mind races.

"Oh, but she wasn't the last waterbender, was she?" June walks around, appraising all of the tribes people. "The Southern prisoners at the Boiling Rock have been _most _informative."

_Oh, _Katara thinks stupidly. _Of course. _Images of her father being burned and tortured spin in her mind.

"When the man who told us finally broke," June continues, "he said that the waterbender was actually a little girl." June's gaze lands on Katara. Katara feels her heart stop. "Of course, that was three years ago."

June edges closer to Katara and whispers loud enough that Sokka can hear: "Here's the deal. You prove that you're the waterbender - something that idiot who killed your mother forgot to ask of her -, you come with us, and no one in your tribe is hurt. You resist, or try to be some sort of hero and use your bending against us, and we take everyone to the Fire Nation to be sold into slavery," June tilts her head towards the children with knives at their throats, "and maybe my soldiers' hands will slip."

Katara hopes that her glare can burn a hole in June's pretty face.

"Katara-" Sokka starts, but he's cut off by Katara herself.

"Fine."

Katara avoids looking at Sokka as a Dai Li agent steps forward and removes the rock around Katara's wrists. Katara stands tall and bends up a rivulet of water from the snow beneath her feet and the Dai Li agent immediately binds her hands again. The water drops midair and splashes onto her.

"You're taking my sister, at least let me say goodbye to her," Sokka says to June, speaking through his clenched teeth. "Or are you afraid that a _peasant _is going to attack you?"

After he glances at June, one of the Dai Li agents frees Sokka with a flick. Sokka rushes towards Katara and crushes her to his chest, with the top of Katara's head barely grazing his chin. Katara only feels numb.

"I'm so sorry," Sokka says softly, pulling away slightly. Katara looks down at the snow underneath her feet. Then he whispers, "I'll find you, Katara."

Katara's gaze snaps up. "Don't. You have to keep the tribe safe, okay? That's your first priority, not me. I'll hold my own." There's no change in Sokka's expression and Katara would shake him if her hands weren't bound. She hisses urgently, "Do you hear me, Sokka? Keep everyone else safe." Katara doesn't know whether she should risk her next words, but then says them anyway, "Especially Essa."

"My soldiers' hands are getting tired," June sing-songs from atop her shirsu.

Sokka starts to pull away. "Essa?"

"She's like me," Katara says, trying to move her lips as little as possible.

Sokka's eye widen in understanding. June sings another warning and Katara takes a few steps back.

"I love you."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was going to happen anyway."

Two soldiers come towards Katara and grab her elbows on either side and start walking her away. Katara looks back, just once, and sees with alarm that some of the soldiers are staying behind.

"You said you'd leave my tribe alone!" Katara turns her glare to June. "Why are your soldiers staying? You got what you wanted!"

"A few weeks of close monitoring never hurt anybody," she shrugs.

All Katara hears is _just try to step out of line, waterbender._

* * *

_XxX_

* * *

(A/N) Reviews are always appreciated! I have the first five chapters of this already written, so you can expect regular updating. There's not much Zutara in the beginning, but after all of the world-setting-up stuff, it'll get there eventually.


	2. Arc I: in the face of flames

_The walls start breathing_

_My mind's unweaving_

_~It Ends Tonight, The All-American Rejects_

* * *

Arc I: Whereabouts Unknown

* * *

-in the face of flames-

* * *

Katara is put in a cell somewhere deep enough in the ship that she'd get lost trying to find the sky.

Between sparse servings of bread and grapes, Katara contemplates ways to escape, even though she knows escape is not an option. Not only because of the twenty-some firebenders on the ship, but because she doesn't have any ounce of faith that her tribe won't be eradicated if Katara shows any resistance. Really, what use are nonbending women and children (and Sokka and Essa, but they can't know about her) to the Fire Nation?

She can only tell time by the soldiers' rotation to guard the cell. The two men who watch her for the first half of the day are always completely silent, only talking to each other when necessary ("I'm going to the bathroom", "Our shift's over"), but the two soldiers who take over after them chatter like sparrowkeets. Currently, one of them (Taro, Katara thinks his name is) is talking about trying to get promoted to the Phoenix King's army. Katara thinks he'll never make it, between the Phoenix King's paranoia (he's built his own palace in a previously unsettled mountain even higher than Caldera) and the numbers (there are only 100 people in his private army).

Katara finishes off the last of her grapes and then lies down in a corner of her cell, curled up on her side. She shifts a bit and is silent for a few minutes before she starts taking steady, deep breathes; feigning sleep.

Taro stops his grumbling about the Phoenix King's army, and instead drops his voice a notch and says, "Don't you think it's crazy how June's become a captain so fast?"

The other soldier, Ren, huffs. "Sure is. There's soldiers like Li who've been in the army for years now, and this Earth Kingdom girl just comes in one day, and _boom_, a few trips later she's our captain."

Katara opens her eyes momentarily in surprise. Earth Kingdom?

"Fire Lord Azula's getting crazier by the day. I heard June didn't even go through proper training," Taro says, disgruntled, "You know, when I was in training..."

Katara switches sides slowly, exhaling and trying to let Taro's stories lull her to sleep like Gran-gran's would when Katara was little.

* * *

"Hey." Katara hears the urgent hiss through the foggy screen of sleep. "Hey, waterbender, get up for a second."

Katara sits up quickly, wildly searching the dark until she meets the nearly-black eyes on the other side of her bars. She squints into the darkness. Taro and Ren both have golden eyes.

"Take this." Katara realizes the voice is female.

"June." Katara's voice holds suspicion. There's the clinking of keys and the door opens slightly, and June places a cup right inside the cell. Katara glares at it and hopes June can see her.

"It's water," June says. Katara keeps looking at the cup and can almost hear June roll her eyes. "It's not poisoned. The Fire Lord needs you alive."

Katara reaches for the water and briefly entertains the idea of encasing June's head in ice before taking a tentative sip. She tries to savor the water, but once she gets a taste - Katara notes its acrid aftertaste - she finds herself gulping the whole cup down.

June still sits across from her, separated by metal.

"You're from the Earth Kingdom," Katara says, her tone neutral.

"I am," June replies in the same tone.

Katara pushes the cup towards June. "Thanks, but you can leave now, _Captain_," she says, her tone mocking. "Wouldn't want to hold you up from your duties to the _Fire Nation_."

June's countenance remains stoic as she silently opens the cell's door and leaves with the cup. Katara curls back into herself and falls asleep.

* * *

On the fifth day (and too many stories to count from Taro), Katara is taken out of her cell in the dead of night. Taro and Ren are dismissed from their shift and instead two Dai Li agents flank her at each side.

Katara is led up two flights of stairs. As they walk down a metal-walled corridor she finds herself looking around for windows and finds none. She tries to keep her thoughts under control as they round the first corner, but by the third turn she gives up and decides to reassure herself, _at least they won't kill you; Fire Lord Azula needs you alive. _But she also knows that the Fire Nation is known for things worse than death.

When the agents finally push open a door, Katara almost laughs.

It's a bath.

"You need to look presentable for our arrival in the Fire Nation," one of the Dai Li agents tells her. "You understand, of course, that there will be consequences should you try to use your bending against us."

Katara rolls her eyes and disappears behind the thin screen in front of the tub. She somewhat hesitantly takes off her clothes and slips into the warm water in only her wrappings. She scrubs herself with the bar of fancy soap perched on the rim of the bathtub and, for the time being, ignores the pull of the water and the urge to bend. Once she feels clean and most of the soap is washed off, Katara tries to bend, just to pull up a thin ribbon of water, but finds that she can't. Frowning, she gives it another couple of tries, but the water doesn't respond to her movements.

She gets out of the tub and quickly puts her dirty Water Tribe clothes on again, ignoring the outfit of red laid out on a rack next to the tub. The Dai Li exchange a glance when they see her clothes but then seem to mentally shrug as they lead her back to her cell.

When they're locking her back in, Katara asks, almost conversationally, "Why couldn't I bend?"

"Suppressants," is the answers.

Katara smirks, feeling a sense of pride that they think her dangerous enough to suppress her bending.

* * *

"Only a few hours left."

That is the only sentence that Katara hears for the next several hours. The silent guards are on duty.

* * *

"Why isn't she in the clothes selected for her?" June asks when Katara is hauled up to the deck.

Katara barely hears her; too focused on trying to get her eyes to work properly after being in dim light for a week. The sun in the Fire Nation is all-too bright and beating down hard on her back and Katara feels herself starting to sweat. She wonders if she will ever see snow again and be warmed by a hug from Gran-gran instead of _steamed_ by Fire Nation air.

"I won't wear Fire Nation clothes," Katara says when she's done blinking away the black spots in her vision. She leans her head slightly over the railing and watches the water, wishing she could pull up a wave.

"Fire Lord Azula requested that you come in the reds of the Fire Nation."

"I will wear the colors of my tribe."

June exhales slowly. Dai Li agents shift their arms, but June waves lazily.

"Let her."

They arrive at a port in the heart of Caldera, right by the Royal Plaza, not too long after. As Katara walks off the boat with Dai Li agents and Fire Nation soldiers forming a tight procession around her, it is almost like she is the Fire Lord's guest, with the guard around her for her safety.

A red carpet rolls down the Royal Plaza, a structure that looks simple enough, with a long, wide ashen gray stone path, at the end of which lie five watchtowers. As they walk through the plaza Katara can't help but look down for bloodstains. The last time she had seen her father, they had lost half their men (Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom rebels alike) in a last-ditch attempt to assassinate Ozai. He had told them, teeth gritted and expression strained, of the tundra tanks that came out of nowhere and burned some and crushed others. Ozai probably had a lot of cleaning to do for his coronation ceremony.

The sole entrance into the Royal Palace from the plaza is in the dead center of the watchtowers. Two guards stand on duty, more for show than protection. No one expects intruders to ever get even halfway to the entrance. Both of them incline their heads slightly upon seeing June and open the metal door.

"Agents and soldiers, you are dismissed," June says tersely, waving them away. All of them incline their heads and disappear down different pathways into the maze of tunnels behind the door. The earth binding Katara's wrists disappears into the sleeve of one of the Dai Li. Katara takes a quick look around and knows, especially with the bending suppressant (not that there's any water to bend), that she would never be able to get out.

* * *

Once they emerge from the tunnels, finally above ground, Katara is surprised to see that they land directly outside of the throne room. A small group of three servants is waiting for them.

"Fire Lord Azula has excused you from your duties for the day," the tallest girl says to June, not even looking at Katara. The other two girls eye Katara's clothes with thinly veiled disgust. "Her Highness commends you on your success."

June nods. "Please give the Fire Lord my regards." She moves past Katara and barely brushes against her side. The folds of Katara's tunic shield the small object June slips into Katara's palm from the servants' view. Katara frowns slightly, wondering if she's just been given a bomb or something equally improbable, and then shifts the object in her hand. It feels like some sort of game piece. As the servants gesture for Katara to follow them, Katara slips the object into the waistband of her tunic.

* * *

"So this is the waterbending peasant?"

Katara thinks the servants standing behind her have stopped breathing out of fear at hearing the Fire Lord speak.

Fire Lord Azula looks at Katara with sharp eyes despite her lazy demeanor. Her golden eyes take in Katara's blue clothes. Katara can't seem to tear her own gaze away from the flames surrounding the Fire Lord's throne. She thinks about how it would probably take very little effort for the Fire Lord to kill her. Katara reminds herself that June had said that Azula needs her alive to quell the growing knot of panic in her chest.

"You managed to hide from us for a while, didn't you?" Azula says, and Katara forces herself to look the Fire Lord in the eyes.

"My mother sacrificed herself to give me a chance to live," Katara says neutrally, expecting to illicit some sort of response from the Fire Lord. She does get a response, although it is not the one she expected. The Fire Lord's lips curl into a smile.

"You're a lucky one," she says, "and I'm even luckier to have found you. Your kind have been harder and harder to track down."

Katara falls asleep (she is given a proper room; small with only a bed and a low table, and a bathroom with no running water, but a room) wondering what Azula meant by that.

* * *

When Katara wakes up, she is almost smiling, her lips forming Sokka's name when her vision clears and is assaulted by the bright reds of her room. The servants from the day before sit around the table, talking quietly with one another. Katara stays lying down and strains to make out what the servants are talking about, hoping for something useful, but decides to sit up when she hears "cute" and "I think he likes me".

All three girls look at the bed at the same time as Katara shifts into a sitting position, and then slings her legs over the side and stands up. She crosses her arms over her chest.

After a slight pause, the tall girl tells Katara, "The Fire Lord has invited you for tea in the guest room. We're going to help you prepare." The other two girls nod somewhat reluctantly. "A bath is set up for you along with fresh clothes."

When Katara slips off her tunic, the little playing piece June had given her clatters to the floor, and Katara - her back still to the servants - quickly knocks down a nearby comb, apologizing for her clumsiness. She kneels down to pick up both the comb and the gamepiece (she recognizes it as a Pai Sho tile; with a painted white lotus) and then moves towards the bathtub. Katara takes off her leggings and slides the tile underneath the tub before stepping into the water.

The stubborn part of Katara still refuses to wear the colors of the people who _murdered _her parents, but pulls on the clothes anyway because her own tunic and leggings smell like Sokka's dirty socks. The simple red skirt reaches her ankles and the darker red top has full, loose sleeves edged in gold.

Half an hour later she is being lead through the winding halls of the palace.

* * *

_XxX_


	3. Arc I: five days

Arc I: Whereabouts Unknown

* * *

-five days (to catch up with a prisoner)-

* * *

**Day 1**

Katara thought maybe "having tea" was some Fire Lord euphemism for "I'm going to kill you", but here Katara is in the Royal Family's private guest room, sitting at a low table across from Azula, sipping oolong tea. Katara is surprised to see that the tea doesn't have the slightly acrid aftertaste of the bending suppressant.

Azula watches the realization play across Katara's features and says, "Yes, we're taking you off the bending suppressant. My advisors have told me to wait for another week or so, but I told them that you wouldn't try to escape or do anything drastic."

_Maybe because your soldiers are stationed in my tribe; ready to kill if I step out of line._

Katara is silent.

"So, Kya-"

Katara grits her teeth at the dig. "Katara."

"Sorry, my bad, Katara. Tell me, how has the Southern Water Tribe been doing these past years?"

"We'd been doing fine."

Silence.

"You have a brother?"

"His name is Sokka."

The Fire Lord picks up her teacup, takes a taste of her tea and subsequently makes a face.

"I far prefer jasmine tea over oolong, don't you?"

Katara thinks the bitter taste of oolong suits Azula.

* * *

**Day 2**

"I suppose you've heard of how my now twice-banished brother and I took Ba Sing Se?"

Katara's silence is taken as a no.

"My uncle laid siege to the city for hundreds of days before giving up, all because his beloved son had died," Azula says. Katara sips her ginger tea blankly.

Azula ignores Katara's lack of response and details the events of the siege.

Ba Sing Se had fallen in just six days.

"If you hadn't heard about Ba Sing Se, then I suppose you wouldn't know about Omashu."

Omashu only took one day.

Azula smirks at Katara's surprise. "The king was a great bender and leader, no doubt, but he was old and I had the Dai Li under my command and my brother alongside me. Of course it only took one day. You'll meet the new governor's daughter soon enough."

* * *

**Day 3**

"The most ridiculous of the rebel groups was this gang of _children _who called themselves Freedom Fighters," the Fire Lord says, laughing. "I think their leader is still in the newly-renovated Boiling Rock."

A beat passes.

"Your father was imprisoned there, too, at one point. Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe."

_"What did you do to him?" _Azula raises her eyes, finally having gotten a reaction.

Although Sokka, always the rational one, had long given up on the notion, ("They've probably killed him, okay? That's what the Fire Nation does to rebel leaders"), Katara has always held out hope in some part of her that her father is still alive, starving in some prison, but alive.

"Execution by fire squad."

Tears burn in Katara's eyes and she screams, trying to impale the Fire Lord with a frozen shard of saltwater and oolong.

Katara is informed as the Dai Li drag her out that she won't be given anything to eat for the next two days.

* * *

**Day 4 ****  
**

There are two other girls in the guest room. One of them is like the embodiment of death, all grim faces and sighs and hidden daggers (Katara saw her whip one out of her sleeve to slice a pear), and the other is all-too cheerful, bouncing in her seat and nearly knocking over her tea several times. Katara guesses that Azula can't be expected to have normal friends.

"Meet Mai, the governor of Omashu's daughter," Azula says, with a nod to dreary girl. Katara tries her best not to stare at the pear slices in Mai's hand. The other friend is introduced as an acrobat, one of six sisters ("We all look the same").

Today, Azula, a small smile playing on her lips, talks about her brother's banishment, asking Mai to chime in here and there to fill in parts of the story.

Prince Zuko had spoken out of turn at a war meeting when he was thirteen, leading to the then-Fire Lord Ozai to command the Prince to fight an Agni Kai. To the Prince's surprise ("Not mine," Azula adds with a roll of her eyes), his opponent was his father, and after the young Prince asked for forgiveness, Ozai scarred his son.

"My father sent him off with our crazy tea-loving uncle on a wild goose chase after the Avatar," the Fire Lord says, "and obviously, Zuzu never found the Avatar, but father welcomed him as a hero when we took Ba Sing Se and Omashu in the same week." Then Azula's eyes darken. "However, he betrayed the Fire Nation again only a year after returning home by breaking our _useless _uncle Iroh out of prison and running off with him."

Azula's gaze flicks to Mai. "My brother is a traitor and he will never be welcome home again."

Mai's passive expression wears down with each word, and near the end, she looks as close as Katara guesses she can to enraged.

"I didn't come for this," she finally snaps, and storms out of the room.

Azula whispers, "I think Zuzu might've been the unfortunate target of Mai's affections," and then laughs.

* * *

**Day 5**

On the fifth day, Azula says, "I bet you're wondering why we need you here."

For any other topic, Katara would've stayed still and looked blankly at Azula, but she can't help her curiosity and nods.

"You're one of the last waterbenders in the world."

Katara frowns. A good amount of waterbenders from the North had joined her father's rebel force, so it could be assumed that all of them have been killed over the course of the war, but there are so many more waterbenders at the North Pole. Hakoda had said that there were at least twenty masters the last time he went there, and a lot of their students were quickly on their way to becoming masters themselves. And then, of course, were the young girls, who weren't allowed to use waterbending in combat (Katara had nearly wrecked their home when Hakoda told her that this was part of the reason anyone refused to come teach Katara), so how-

"- last year, Phoenix King Ozai and I decided that it would be best if we had a sort of, ah, continuation of the Southern Raids."

"Continuation," Katara echoes dully.

"Northern Raids were conducted last year by armies of the Phoenix Empire."

"No."

Katara feels like someone has thrown hot tea all over her while simultaneously taking an ice shard and driving it through her chest.

"After numerous treaty negotiations that failed, the tribe continued to show resistance - even making a weak attempt on my life - and we had no choice."

In two quick movements, the tea in the pot and cups on the table rises and turns into ice daggers (Katara knows in the back of her mind that if it didn't work last time it won't work now, but she can't _think_), aimed straight for Azula's heart. Azula evaporates the ice with a single, small burst of fire.

Over Katara's shrieking, Azula says loudly, "I think that's the end of our talk," and two Dai Li agents step into the room. Katara starts towards Azula, her nails bared; fully ready to carve out Azula's veins, but the agents each grab one of her arms and twist them behind her back. Katara feels herself scratch them several times, and she thinks she draws blood, but she doesn't care.

"You _monster_!" what Katara's expression has contorted into can only be called a snarl. "_You killed my people!"_

And Katara finds it interesting to note (not that she realized it in the moment, but much later in the dark of her room) that that one name, _monster, _made the Fire Lord's look of self-assurance slip like nothing else did, not even Katara's weak attempts on her life.

"That's what my mother used to call me," Azula mutters, letting two pieces of hair fall into her eyes and frame her face.

* * *

Katara earns herself another three days without food.

Her stomach feeling like it might digest itself, she wanders restlessly around her room, eventually digging out the Pai Sho tile from beneath the bathtub. She holds it up in the dim moonlight coming from her window and inspects the white lotus design, wondering what June wanted her to do with it.

She falls asleep with the tile clutched in her hand.

* * *

_XxX_


	4. Arc I: playing the game

_Like shining oil this night is dripping down_

_Stars are slipping down_

_~I'll Be Gone, Linkin Park _

* * *

Arc I: Whereabouts Unknown

* * *

-playing the game-

* * *

On the sixth day of Katara's arrival in the Fire Nation, the servants girls take Katara to a different room; this one with cold metal doors in place of the honey-colored carved wood of the guest room.

"It's the Agni Kai chamber," one of them says by way of introduction. Katara glances at her and wonders if Zuko (Prince Zuko? Katara isn't sure how to refer to him, even in her mind) fought his father in this very room.

The other two girls hurry ahead and push open the double doors for Katara. Fire Lord Azula is on the opposite end of the room, and beside her stands a man who looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties. His shoulder length hair is in a classic topknot and his golden eyes gleam with intelligence. Six huge pots of water are on Katara's side of the room; three on the left and three on the right.

"With all due respect, your Highness, the waterbending girl is still weak, and I wouldn't recommend starting so soon-"

"Katara," Azula says. Her voice echoes in the room. The servant girls bow to Azula and scurry away.

Before Katara can say anything, a jab of fire from Azula is heading towards her. On instinct, she pulls out the water from one of the pots and sends it hurling towards the flame.

The Fire Lord kicks in an arc, sending a blade of fire towards Katara, and Katara draws another tendril of water to counter it. She raises both arms and twin water whips rise into the air, and then with a flick of her wrists - open palms towards Azula - the two whips combine into one jet of water.

Azula throws several punches of fire in a quick succession; evaporating most of the water and moving lithely to the right to sidestep the rest. She bends her knees slightly in a classic bending stance and draws in a breath before sending a stream of blue fire towards Katara.

Katara, momentarily stunned by the strange color (blue flames?), runs to the left at the last second (she curses the skirt she's wearing for restricting her movement), feeling heat on her back as she pulls water from two of the pots. She spins once before sending all of the water in another high-pressure jet. Azula merely throws another two jabs of fire and spreads her arms out, using the flames to disperse the water.

The initial rush of adrenaline wears off and suddenly Katara feels _tired. _She's never fought a proper spar like this and she's still weak from being cooped up in a ship and then her room here in the palace. Still, she pushes on, sending water bullets and trying to use water whips to sweep the Fire Lord off her feet.

Within a minute another fiery kick from Azula has knocked Katara to her knees.

While Katara stumbles to her feet (they sting), breathing hard, the Fire Lord straightens easily and bows, breathing steadily.

"Looks like we have a lot of work to do," comments the man who had been watching from the sidelines. "I guess we should start now."

Katara has a million things to say to him but she is still bent over and struggling to get her lungs to function properly.

* * *

"Fire Lord Azula sent these for you. After you change I'll escort you to the chamber we'll you'll train with Master Aon."

The servant hands Katara a bundle of clothes and then steps into the hallway.

They're loose red pants, and a tunic with slits up to her hips that stops just above her knees in the front but reaches mid-calf in the back. Katara quickly puts on the new clothes and follows the servant to the training chamber.

* * *

"You're doing it wrong," says Aon, shaking his head at Katara. Katara clenches her fist and the water floating around her compacts into ice. "Your form was off during your spar with the Fire Lord as well. If she'd actually been trying, you'd have been dead in seconds. Relax your wrists."

"I don't suppose you'd like to demonstrate? Or, I don't know, find an actual waterbending master to teach me?" snaps Katara. She is tired of this _firebender _trying to teach her waterbending, even if he has studied waterbending longer than Katara ever will.

"Katara." A warning note slips into his voice.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that your nation _killed _them all."

"Katara." Aon's voice is full of resolve. He is like any one of Azula's soldiers in the way he carries himself and talks, but he bears Katara's half-hearted taunts (albeit with clenched teeth; it's almost like teasing Sokka), so Katara thinks that he's fractionally better than anyone else in the Fire Nation. "Just try it one more time."

Katara does try it again, over and over for about an hour until it's her hundred-something try. Somewhere along the way, she starts to see the difference. Aon nods at her once in approval.

* * *

Sometimes the Fire Lord drops by with her friends to check on Katara's progress.

The first few weeks of Katara's training are dreadfully tedious, and the Fire Lord doesn't hesitate to voice her boredom with the repetitive exercises. Aon, however, insists that Katara needs to refine her basic moves before getting better at the more advanced sets.

"Why don't you spar with your student?" the Fire Lord says on one of these afternoons. Katara's umpteenth water bullet falls hits the target set up opposite her.

"I don't think-" Aon begins, his voice carefully poised, but Azula cuts him off.

"Come on. Mai and Ty Lee would like to see a spar, too, wouldn't you guys? Besides, I'm leaving for my trip tomorrow. I want to get a good idea of your progress before I'm gone."

Mai eyes Katara disinterestedly while Ty Lee smiles and nods.

Azula's gaze turns back to Aon. "You have my request." With any other eighteen year old girl, the scene would've been almost comical. A young girl bossing around a full-grown man; but Katara still remembers Azula's blue fire and that keeps any thoughts of amusement far away.

Aon inclines his head. "As you wish, Fire Lord."

Katara makes the first move, hurling another water bullet at Aon, and then for a good twenty minutes blows of water and fire are exchanged in quick succession. The Fire Lord smiles and congratulates Katara on her progress at the end of it all.

* * *

"You've almost gotten it down."

Katara pulls the water on the ground in front of her into a water whip, then turns once, raises her arms, and spreads her fingers as gently as she can.

The water turns into ice shards and Katara clenches her teeth in frustration. She can't make stupid snow and her mind won't stop straying to the Southern Water Tribe and _is everyone alive_ and her hands fly up to her necklace more than usual because today is the ninth year of having lost her mother and Katara has never, ever missed her this much before. Before, Katara had Gran Gran and Sokka and the comfort of the snowy tundra to lessen the hollowness but here she has no one.

Tears start to brim in her eyes and she stops the falling ice's descent, gathering the water in a blur and hoping Aon doesn't see her eyes. She doesn't need some firebender's pity.

Katara tries the move a few more times, but when her fifth attempt produces a strange slush, she lets all of the water drop with a splash.

"Katara, what's wrong?" Aon says gently. He moves closer to where she's standing. Katara has had several days like this in the two months she has been training with Aon, where she's just too distracted and homesick to do anything properly, but something about her right now must especially alarm him because this is the first time he has actually reached out.

And for the first time since coming to the Fire Nation, Katara lets herself cry.

Aon is there immediately, awkwardly watching her at first, but then he kneels down beside her and pulls her into his chest, stroking her hair and murmuring things that Katara can't hear over her sobs.

* * *

Over the next few months, Aon becomes Katara's only friend at the palace (friends with a firebender, who would've guessed?), and a stand-in brother and father all in one. Sometimes, Katara even gets the feeling that he doesn't like his own nation too much, although she never says this out loud.

He is the one to quiet her sobs when she misses the Southern Water Tribe so much it _hurts, _the one to make stupid jokes with her since Sokka can't, and the only one who checks up on Katara by choice when she comes down with a fever.

Now, it has been six months since Katara was taken from the water tribe (Katara hasn't seen the Fire Lord since that one spar, although Azula's friends can still be seen meandering around the palace).

On this particular day, Aon is apologizing for the Northern and Southern Raids.

"Why?" Katara asks as soon as the _sorry _leaves his mouth.

"Someone of my own nation ordered a whole group of people to be killed, so for what it's worth, I apologize," Aon says stiffly. They had been sparring a few minutes earlier - Katara notes with pride that she's beating him more often than he beats her now - and they're both sitting on a bench side-by-side. He hesitates. "My father always wanted to be a waterbender. We used to read about the waterbenders and waterbending when he was off from work."

Katara raises an eyebrow. "Isn't that looked down upon in the Fire Nation?"

_Looked down upon _is mild wording. _Treasonous, _at least in the eyes of the Fire Lord, is what Katara meant.

Aon shrugs. "Yes, but that doesn't matter now. I'm just part of Azula getting what she wants."

* * *

Katara is allowed to walk in the halls on her own now. Granted, the only place she can walk to is the walled-in training chamber where she works with Aon, and there are Fire Nation guards at every corner, but even that distance is enough to catch bits and pieces of news from nobles who cross her path.

Everyday, she takes her time navigating the halls, keeping her head ducked and ears open. The nobles continue their conversations even when they see her, because what is some _peasant _going to do with any information she gleans, and there's never really any problems, anyway. The biggest issue in the last month was a shortage of sugar in one of the more distant cities for Fire Nation nobility. Katara always hopes to catch something about the Southern Water Tribe, but it seems like everyone has completely forgotten about it.

However, now the nobles' voices are more hushed, and Katara actually has to strain to make out what they say. They're all talking about some Blue Spirit, "an enemy of the Fire Nation," they spit. This Blue Spirit distresses the nobles especially, as the women recount in high-pitched voices of their friends in all cities, wives of generals and governors, who have been robbed of their jewels and gold by the Blue Spirit and had it end up in the form of food and coins in the city's poor. There's a whole black market now, they say, that the Blue Spirit's single-handedly started, for selling their pretty ornaments and using the money to help out people who need it.

Katara doesn't think he's bad at all.

* * *

"Aon, why am I here?"

Katara has asked him this several times before and gotten no straight answer. He's one of Azula's many advisors, and although Azula doesn't keep any of them close (she's known to be extremely paranoid), he definitely has some idea of what is wanted of her. Katara's even asked the servants in her itching to know what she is even doing here, what Azula wants with a waterbending master, why she hasn't been killed - and is, instead, being treated as Katara begrudgingly admits -pretty well for a prisoner.

Aon sighs and Katara copies him. She looks at him for a few moments, blue eyes imploring him to answer, but then she exhales softly at the silence and turns to start warming up. Lately, Aon has been showing her how to apply firebending to water, to make her attacks faster and more lethal. Even though Katara can sooth her sore muscles with her healing afterwards, she always finds that this sort of bending stretches them out in ways she isn't used to, and Aon has told her to do at least twenty minutes of exercises beforehand to loosen up.

When Katara looks up, ready to start sparring, she finds that instead of finishing his usual warm-ups, Aon is looking straight at her. Conflict mars his features. Katara watches him patiently.

"The Fire Lord has found the Avatar," he says finally, and Katara looks at him like he's crazy. "She's been near the South Pole for the past few months, overseeing the mission to retrieve him."

"The Avatar disappeared a hundred years ago," Katara says disbelievingly, but already she feels hope creeping into her voice, the one that she'd lost when the Fire Nation had won the war.

"Last I heard, they'd retrieved him from an iceburg several miles from where your tribe is right now."

"This is insane," Katara says doubtfully, but she finds herself making sense of the situation nonetheless. If the Avatar's been frozen in an iceburg for 100 years, that explains why another water Avatar wasn't born, doesn't it? The ice would preserve his body, and the Avatar probably has some sort of power to keep himself alive. Katara feels her hopes rising against her will, because the Avatar is back and he can finally make this right. "But where do I come into this?"

"The Fire Lord needs someone to teach him waterbending," Aon says. "The boy is an airbending master, but he doesn't have full control of any other elements."

"But you could teach him waterbending. You've been doing fine with me."

Aon shakes his head. "I've only been able to help you as much I have because you had already taught yourself so much. It's one thing to read about waterbending and another to actually do it," he says.

Katara is still reeling when she says, "The Fire Lord couldn't have possibly known about the Avatar when I was captured. What- what was she going to with me before she realized she needed a teacher for the Avatar?"

Aon's expression darkens considerably and he shakes his head.

* * *

Katara can somehow _feel _that she's meant to teach the Avatar.

* * *

_XxX_

* * *

(A/N) I apologize for the complete dearth of Zutara, but that'll kick in during the second arc. There's one or two chapters left in this arc. If you could take a few moments to review, even just to ask a question or criticize, it would mean the world to me, and I hope you guys like it so far :D

(PS) Any guesses as to who Aon's father is? I think I might've made it a bit too obvious but oh well.


	5. Arc I: alignment of stars

_I think I'm drowning_

_Asphyxiated _

_~Time is Running Out, Muse _

* * *

Arc I: Whereabouts Unknown

* * *

-alignment of stars-

* * *

"Fire Lord Azula will be arriving in three days," the boy with the messenger hawk says, his clothes the dull brownish red of the lower class. His eyes roam the piece of parchment in his hands and go wide towards the end. "Phoenix King Ozai will be accompanying the Fire Lord in celebration." The gathering of Fire Nation nobility (plus Katara, who's being made to wait on the dreary girl with daggers) is deathly silent, but the tremor of nervous excitement running through the crowd is almost tangible.

"The Avatar has been captured!"

Cheers erupt in Katara's ears. The corners of Mai's mouth drag further down on her face. She seems to be intolerant of happiness.

"This isn't good," Aon murmurs from beside Katara. She barely catches his words.

"What?" she says, loud enough to be heard over the din. He should be celebrating like the rest of his people.

"Because now I'll have two children to supervise," he says teasingly. Katara doesn't buy it for a second.

She doesn't call him out on it just yet, though, because her head has started to throb from the noise. The Southern Water Tribe has not prepared her for this kind of racket. Katara hopes Mai tires of the festive mood quickly.

A few minutes later, as one of Azula's top advisors starts giving a jingoistic speech about how the Fire Nation will soon be the superior nation to impossibly louder cheers, Mai says, "If you could escort me to my room, please." Katara nods hurriedly, her brain reverberating in her skull from the movement, and starts picking her way through the crowd before Mai even finishes her sentence.

* * *

There is a full moon that night and Katara can't sleep. She can barely wrap her mind around the fact that the Avatar - who has become a sort of fairytale in the past century; a hero that mothers tell stories of to their children - has been found alive.

She restlessly plays with a glassful of water, turning it into ice and then snow and then liquid and then steam, trying to ignore the building dread in her stomach.

* * *

The next three days are a blur of feverish preparation.

Servants carry decorations and chairs and tables to and fro, setting up the Coronation Plaza for the Phoenix King and the Fire Lord's reception. Fire Lord Azula has sent very specific descriptions of how the palace is to look, and the preparations are tackled with warlike planning and precision by Azula's advisors and servants. Katara asks Aon why everyone is so neurotic about the arrangements being flawless.

"Azula once banished someone for trying to kill her," he says after a bit of thinking. "The servant had missed a bone while cleaning the fish she ate for dinner."

* * *

After her daily training, Katara wanders through the palace courtyards, keeping center pieces from falling off tables and helping the servants carry plates and glasses from the kitchens to the long tables set up outside for food and drinks. Today, some generals serving under Azula are making rounds to see that the preparations are on track, and everyone is so high strung that Katara thinks that people will start to spontaneously combust when the actual arrival day comes.

Katara is just fixing up an arrangement of flowers when she hears a shout from the steps of the kitchen.

"The general's just left the gardens!" one of the kitchen boys calls out. "I think he's coming here!"

The blur of crystalware and china passing from hand to hand suddenly speeds up as the last pieces for today are put in position. The steady footsteps of about three people resound from somewhere not too far off the left. Gradually, people stop moving and fall back to the sides to make way for whatever general is coming. All chattering ceases when the footsteps draw constantly closer.

Someone holds out another vase of flowers to Katara. "Last one," the old lady says, eyes darting to a nearby table without a centerpiece. "You'll be much quicker than me."

Katara looks in front of her. All of the servants have retreated to the edges of the courtyards, watching the general make his way through. She takes the vase from the old lady's hands and walks quickly to the bare table-

-then finds herself suddenly very intimate with the courtyard's marble stones as she falls to her knees. There's the sharp bite of glass embedding itself into her palms as she scrambles to her feet and she inhales sharply at the sudden burst of pain.

The footsteps of the general - who's somewhere in the middle of the courtyard - stop at the sound of shattering glass.

"Stand straight," he barks at Katara, who has ducked her head to pick out bits of crystal from her skin. The hairs on her neck rise as she immediately looks up. The general's footsteps resume, quicker now and coming towards her.

Katara immediately straightens up, still avoiding the general's eyes.

"I should punish you for your clumsiness," he says bitterly. "The Fire Lord and Phoenix King are arriving tomorrow. We can't have people like you knocking over things, can we?" A pause, then, "Look at me when I speak to you."

Katara lifts her chin. The general looks taken aback by the color of her eyes for a split moment before his expression turns mocking again.

"So you're the waterbender," he says, raising an eyebrow. "I've heard you're almost a master now, fit to teach the Avatar."

Katara nods hesitantly. Where is he going with this?

He starts to walk away then, and everyone in the courtyard watches him for his next move, but after he takes a few more paces, it seems as if there's none coming, and a low murmur starts up.

Then the general throws a bolt of fire at Katara.

Katara is too slow to react, and she pulls the water from a pitcher on the closest table a little too late. She's able to block most of the attack but her right sleeve is singed off and the skin underneath burned. Katara clenches her teeth, refusing to cry out. Through the spots dancing in front of her eyes, she makes out the form of the general near the fountain in the courtyard's center, watching her with a smirk on his face.

"Tell Aon your reflexes still need some work."

Her burned arm shooting pain through her whole body, Katara instinctively uses her left arm to draw another rivulet of water from the pitcher two tables over to heal herself, but the general thinks she's trying to retaliate and dissipates the water with another jab of flame. Katara looks down at her arm and knows that if she doesn't heal it within the next two minutes it will scar.

"I should have you executed for insolence," he growls, "or go along with our original plans for you. You'd fetch a good price with that pretty face."

Katara slumps her shoulders and looks down, trying to look every bit the part of the submissive peasant this general seems to want to see. There are a few moments of silence before the general throws one last punch of fire - Katara feels the heat rather than sees it - and he lets the flame die out just inches from touching Katara as a warning.

"You're lucky you're the last of your kind," Katara hears the general say. He then laughs as if he's said something clever and leaves the courtyard. Katara looks up and as soon as he's out of sight, all of the servants start talking at once; many of the women make a beeline for Katara, but Katara barely sees or hears anything and makes a mad dash for the fountain. She submerges her whole right arm in the water, gritting her teeth at the initial pain, but then the water glows blue and she sighs in relief.

* * *

The burn leaves a pink scar that runs down the entire inside of Katara's forearm. When Aon sees, his face darkens and he says something indistinct before taking off through the hallways, his right hand gripping Katara's arm and dragging her along.

"Aon-" Katara starts, not even knowing _what _he's thinking, but he shoots her another dark look that makes her clamp her mouth shut.

They burst into one of the many tea rooms in the palace. This one seems to be reserved for high-ranking military officers and advisors of the Fire Lord, as everyone in the rather large space is wearing either a glimmering uniform or silky red robes.

Aon looks around for a few moments before he spots whoever he's looking for, and tugs Katara along as he approaches them.

"So then I went and captured-"

"Zhao," Aon says lowly. The general who had burned Katara turns around, frowning at the interruption.

"Master Aon," General Zhao says, and nods his head in greeting. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"I'd like to know why you burned my student, General."

"Your student?" Zhao says, looking confused until he catches sight of Katara standing behind Aon. "Oh, her."

"You seem to enjoy injuring anyone studying under me," Aon bites out, old-sounding anger seeping into his voice with every word, and suddenly Katara realizes this isn't really about just her.

With all of their waterbending training, it is easy to forget that Aon is, in fact, a master firebender, and Katara watches with a sense of foreboding as sparks appear at Aon's fingertips.

"Oh, so you actually fight, unlike your deserter of a father," Zhao says smoothly, eyeing the growing flame in Aon's palm with mild interest.

"He taught you everything you know," Aon says through his clenched teeth.

"And here you are, carrying on his legacy by teaching a _waterbender_."

Katara finds out later that everything in the room had been shattered into ash.

* * *

The Avatar is a twelve-year old (technically 115 year old) boy.

He stands in between the Fire Lord and Phoenix King at the highest point in the Coronation Plaza, looking completely healthy with no signs of psychological scarring. He looks awed by the swell of people in front of him cheering, no less than 5,000 voices, and waves energetically at the crowd at Ozai's prodding.

The little boy trusts them. The face of the Fire Lord was probably the first one the child saw when he came out of that ice berg; the red Fire Nation ships his saviors and not his foes.

The celebrations last well into the night, with the scent of spices clinging to everyone and an undercurrent of red wine. Katara is allowed to roam around the courtyards under the guise of being nobility. She just has to make sure to hide her eyes and necklace, which isn't too hard with the golden glow of lanterns casting more shadows than usual on everything and the aforementioned wine.

* * *

"Make you stick closely to your training schedule," Azula says, idly twirling a piece of hair around her finger. "I'll have my guards watching you closely in case of any threats."

Katara nods, starting to make her way towards the door, but Azula's voice stops her.

"And the most important thing, waterbender, is that our little Avatar doesn't find out about _certain events._"

* * *

"Hi," the Avatar says, his neck craned slightly as he looks up at Katara, "I'm Aang."

"My name's Katara," she replies, smiling down at him. He tentatively smiles back.

Aon shifts beside her. "You can call me Aon."

"So you're a master waterbender, right?" Aang says to Katara, and she nods, and then he asks, "And Aon is a master firebender?"

"Yes."

"Oh, then I need to call you Master Katara and Master Aon, don't I?" Aang says, brow furrowed, and Katara tries to get in a word to tell him _no, there's no need for that, _but Aang continues on in a flurry of words. "You know, Gyatso's told me about how master waterbenders can make snow and use water to make _tornadoes _that they can ride on-"

Katara feels her smile dim slightly. "Who's Gyatso?"

"He's my best friend back at the Southern Air Temple, along with Appa, but Appa was trapped in that iceberg with me so he's here in the stables right now. We can probably visit the stables tomorrow and then we can go to the Southern Air Temple sometime soon," Aang says quickly, his eyes twinkling with excitement. "Azula told me that you're from the Southern Water Tribe, so we could go to both places in one trip."

There are so many things wrong with what Aang's saying but all Katara can get out is, "Stables?"

"Yeah! Appa's a sky bison. Nobody's seemed to see one before here, but there's _tons _back at home."

Katara feels herself soften at the boy's giddiness.

Azula is probably laughing back in the throne room.

* * *

"Azula said to stop training at noon so I can go inside for lunch," Aang says to Katara and Aon the next day. Katara nods and continues to demonstrate her mini-water whip. Aon sits on the opposite side of the training chamber, skimming through some scrolls.

"Now you try."

Aang's eyebrows draw together in concentration as he lifts up a rivulet of water from his pot. He moves his hands to the right positions, but halfway, the water starts to shudder and falls back into the pot with a small splash.

"You're doing really good," Katara says, the manner of talking she used with the younger kids in the tribe automatically coming out. "All you need to do is relax a bit."

Aang looks up at her and smiles, his eyes shining.

An hour later, when Aon stands up from his spot on the floor and announces that it's noon, Aang turns to Katara and says, "Why don't you come eat with me and Azula? I'm sure she wouldn't mind."

Katara darts a glance at Aon, biting her lip. "I usually have lunch in my room, so I can go over some scrolls while I'm eating." Aang frowns slightly but leaves with a palace escort at Aon's nudging.

"She'll kill you," Aon says to Katara afterwards. He pauses slightly before adding, "Maybe even him."

"What?"

"If you tell him anything."

Katara is slightly taken aback.

"I understand killing _me, _but why would she kill him? He's the Phoenix Empire's ultimate weapon."

_And the world's only hope for peace. _

"But he also happens to reincarnate, and currently, the Northern Water Tribe has Phoenix Empire armies stationed in it, and you're familiar with the Southern Water Tribe's situation."

Katara has to think for a few moments, but when realization hits-

"That's inhumane," Katara says, eyes widening, and then realizes of course, this is the _Fire Nation _and _Phoenix King _they're talking about.

"It would so easy to let him be born as a water child, and then ship the new Avatar here to grow up in isolation," Aon says grimly. And then he adds, more quietly, "They're slipping. Father and daughter both. Insanity seems to run in the family."

* * *

A week passes, and then two, then three. Katara's routine is tedious.

She gets up every morning with the sunrise, like all of the firebenders in the palace (there's too much of a ruckus to sleep after sunrise anyway). After a meager breakfast that is delivered to her room about an hour after sunrise, Katara usually sits at the low table in her room, reading some scroll that Aon's snuck her, or if she doesn't have one of those, paces in the full, unimpressive expanse of her room. Even with Katara's fairly short strides, it only takes six to cover the width and ten to cover the length. Then she's off to the training chamber, the palace guards' eyes following her through the halls, to practice with Aang for a good six hours before she's allowed to make her way back to her room and rest.

Katara is surprised to see a palace guard in place of Aon inside the massive room. Aang is further into the metal walls, already doing his first few beginning sets.

"Hey, Katara," Aang says, guiding the water he'd been practicing with back into a pot.

Katara smiles. "Hi, Aang."

"Aon's in a meeting with the Fire Lord," Aang says, "so they sent a guard in place."

Azula's proper title and position is the only truth that Aang knows about the world right now.

"Do you know if he'll be back later?"

Aang shrugs. "I'm pretty sure the meeting was supposed to last all day. Azula said there were governors of all different cities coming to the palace for it."

Katara feels uneasy as she moves through the basic sets with Aang.

"You've nearly mastered it," Katara says, momentarily stopping the ice blocks she's flinging towards Aang. In a few fluid movements he breaks through the last ones with his water whip. She feels a surge of pride. "At this rate, you'll probably be learning the advanced set in a few weeks."

Aang is reforming a water whip when Aon bursts into the room. He's holding a piece of black cloth in one hand.

"Katara, you're needed right now. Avatar, stay here," he stays tersely, gesturing for Katara to follow him before disappearing from the door frame. As soon as Katara's left the training chamber he steps up behind her and blindfolds her with the black cloth. To Katara's surprise, she can see pretty well through it.

"It's a special weave," he says quietly. "Just pay attention to where we go."

He walks briskly through the hallways, and Katara has to practically run to keep up with his long strides. Katara mentally notes the path they're taking. Aon is leading Katara into unfamiliar corridors, these ones wider with gold-laced wallpaper and fine paintings that pass by in a blur.

She files away the directions _right, left, left, second left, second right, third left, second left, big doors (and guards) _in her mind.

"Is that the waterbender?" one of the guards asks. Aon must nod because then there's a slight _whoosh_ of air as the guards open the doors and let them through.

Aon starts to take the blindfold off as they enter a room, and to Katara's surprise, she hears Azula cursing and sputtering cruel remarks. Aon finally lets Katara see again.

They seem to be in Azula's bedroom.

The room is huge, with a wide dresser taking up nearly all of the wall on the left, a wardrobe that's built into the right wall, and a set of ornate couches near the four-poster bed that the Fire Lord herself is currently sitting on. One of the couches has been knocked over and charred.

Two old ladies who seem to be twins and a young man who seems to be a doctor stand around Azula in a half circle. Azula's hair has fallen out of its top knot and Katara sees her headpiece carelessly thrown halfway across the floor, although she's still wearing her full Fire Lord robes. The four people surrounding the bed are engaged in a heated discussion. Katara looks back at Aon, eyebrows creased, and he says, "She's injured. You need to heal her."

Azula sees Katara first.

"Li, Lo, get out, and take your worthless doctor with you. The waterbender's here," she says through gritted teeth. She moves her right hand away from where it had been clutching a wound on her left arm, and Katara sees a thin layer of blood on her fingers.

The two elderly women and the man bow stiffly and leave the room, eyeing Katara as they walk past her.

Katara walks quickly and stands in front of Azula, taking the water from a pot set beside the bed and forming a glove of water around each of her hands. Katara tries not to wince when she gets a good look at the wound. There's a long, bleeding cut stretching from Azula's upper arm to nearly her wrist, and the edges of the cut are burned; the skin peeling and starting to form blisters. Katara touches the water to Azula's arm and it starts glowing silvery blue. The Fire Lord inhales sharply and grits her teeth.

"I trust you blindfolded our healer when you brought her here," Azula says to Aon, her voice sharp.

"Of course, Your Majesty."

"Good."

Katara's never healed an injury so severe (the worst she's had to deal with back home is cuts Sokka's gotten from clumsiness or helping to speed along the recovery of an ill child), and it takes at least twenty minutes for her to stitch the skin back together, sooth the burned tissue, and get rid of all of the blisters. When she's done, Katara bends the soiled water back into the pot by Azula's bed.

"You can leave now," Azula says, pushing the sleeve of her robe back down, and pointing to the door.

When they've made it back to the training chamber (Aang is halfway up the walls on an air scooter), Katara asks, "So, how did the meeting go?"

Suddenly, Aon looks very, very tired.

* * *

_XxX_


	6. Interlude: the (twice) banished prince

_You were always faster than me,_

_I'll never catch up with you _

_~No One's Here to Sleep, Naughty Boy ft. Bastille_

* * *

Interlude

* * *

the (twice) banished prince

* * *

**001. Threat**

When he bought the blue mask in an Earth Kingdom market during his chase for the Avatar, he only bought it for the faint sense of nostalgia it gave him, for the ghost of his mother's hand gripping his as they watched _Love Amongst the Dragons. _

* * *

**002. Empire**

The comet burned through the sky and he said, "You can only conquer the world if you leave anything to rule," and the eyes opposite him narrowed, but the firebenders in the Earth Kingdom's orders were changed to _damage not destroy. _

* * *

**003. Falter**

Ozai smiled with all of his teeth and asked his son to join him in making new plans for the Earth Kingdom, less quick and painful ones, and Zuko almost wishes his father hadn't pulled back on the day of the comet.

* * *

**004. Compliment**

"I didn't know you had this in you, Zuzu," Azula proclaimed with a smirk, glancing down at the thick stack of plans in his ink-stained hands, and Zuko could feel his uncle's eyes on him all the way from the palace's prison.

* * *

**005. Glass**

He held the mask above the water and contemplated letting it sink (stupid thing already cost him too much trouble), but decided to keep it, in the end, letting it slide over his scar as he went off to scare some more nobles.

* * *

**006. Honor**

The lightening shot towards Zuko in two fragmented ribbons and he caught them, his foot slipping back, (_in, down, across, up, out), _and he realized there was no honor for him in the Fire Nation.

* * *

**007. Work**

He stayed up late at night, looking for loopholes in the guards' rotations and calculating which passages to take.

* * *

**008. Jealous**

"And how many sets have you mastered, Zuko?"

* * *

**009. Strings**

This time he and his uncle had nothing but the clothes on their backs.

* * *

**010. Semantics**

There was often a gleam in his father's eyes, Zuko thought, and at one point he thought it was the gleam of intelligence, but now, as he looks at the notices asserting firebenders' superiority, he realizes what the other nations realized long ago: it was an insanity that seemed to run in his family.

* * *

**011. Innocence**

A soft smile broke on his lips when he saw the little girl running across the clearing, wearing the muddled reds of the lower class Fire Nation but making the rocks at her feet tremble.

* * *

**012. Dispose**

News of the Northern Raids spread quickly in the Phoenix-troop-ruled New Ozai (most of its citizens still called it by Ba Sing Se, just not in front of the soldiers).

* * *

**013. Blaze**

He lashed out with his dao swords at the flames surrounding him, the licks of bright red dulling to orange, then yellow, then nothing, and he cut down the back door of the house quickly and sprinted when he heard a child shout, "Are you the Blue Spirit? Please come back, my family wants to thank you! "

* * *

**014. Neglect**

He couldn't help but feel that the woman named Noriko was somehow familiar, but his uncle pulled him off to some spice cart before Zuko could put his finger on what it was.

* * *

**015. Quake**

Zuko watched the firebending Phoenix Empire soldier get pummeled to a pulp by a trio of earthbenders, and then watched the three boys not even flinch when they were arrested and beat, hearing his uncle's voice low in his ear, "We have to be very careful, nephew."

* * *

**016. Guess**

Although his uncle did some strange things (some days, like today, Zuko trailed him in his darkest clothes just to make sure he didn't kill himself on the way to wherever), going off into a flower shop in the dead of night was a first and Zuko frowned when his uncle disappeared into a display of white lotuses.

* * *

**017. Quarrel**

"We don't have to _kill _all the earthbenders," Zuko had said, trying to keep notes of panic from creeping into his voice as every single head turned to him in the room, and he was hit with a sense of déjá vu as his father replied, "Then maybe your allegiance isn't to the Phoenix Empire, Zuko," and his sister shook her head almost imperceptibly.

* * *

**018. Brood**

His uncle forced him out on a date and he sulked until the girl herself angrily told him to go home.

* * *

**019. Effort**

They were moving, always moving, trying not to get caught by Phoenix Empire or Fire Nation soldiers, because Zuko was now wanted dead or alive, and Zuko was painfully aware that his father preferred the former.

* * *

**020. Now**

His little hobby (pastime, diversion, he can't find a good word for it) as the Blue Spirit becomes something more when people in places he hasn't even made an appearance in know the Blue Spirit's story.

* * *

**021. Solve**

"You're part of a secret organization."

* * *

**022. Rest**

Instead of sleeping, Zuko found himself in the shadows of nobles' houses, swiping whatever glimmered.

* * *

**023. Soon**

"Are you going to tell me what this organization is about?"

* * *

**024. Listen**

Sometimes he went into tea shops and other gathering places for the pompous and let everyone's words soak into his mind.

* * *

**025. Haze**

It was their seventh day in the murky air of the swamp and he thought he saw his mother, but then set the twisted stump that had fooled him on fire, just as someone wearing what looked like a grass skirt came at him from the dense foliage and _waterbent _the fire out.

* * *

**026. Excite**

The first he saw a wanted poster for the Blue Spirit, seller of stolen goods, disruptor of peace, Zuko didn't feel the dread he should have but hoped the Blue Spirit could become a perpetual thorn in his father's side.

* * *

**027. Verbal**

His uncle sang and danced for many in their worst days and Zuko could only try to hide his face.

* * *

**028. Fragment**

He saw bits of his younger self in the new Phoenix Empire recruits.

* * *

**029. Inert**

He watched them burn a man alive.

* * *

**030. Classic**

He started to forget the traditional bending stances and his uncle simply said, "I hope you forget the formal style altogether, Zuko, because the other elements are the best way to teach you about your own."

* * *

**031. Gone**

They found the little earthbender boy on the side of the road, crying because his parents were dead, and Iroh immediately took him in.

* * *

**032. Jagged**

When his hiccuping sobs subsided, the boy proved to be tough, and talked back to everything Zuko said (which is quite a feat for a six-year-old), which irritated Zuko to no end.

* * *

**033. Strange**

The boy's eyes were amber, and Zuko felt himself falter he noticed the very Fire Nation color.

* * *

**034. Measure**

Arin stood tall next to Zuko each day and said, "I think I'm almost as tall as you now."

* * *

**035. Ashes**

His Blue Spirit escapades evolved and he was stealing important documents from the rich houses and burning them.

* * *

**036. Leave**

For the first two months Zuko and his uncle argued everyday about leaving the boy behind.

* * *

**037. Fit**

The little boy only threw one of them and that was the time a stray animal came in and swiped his food, and then he never did it again.

* * *

**038. Elusive**

Zuko couldn't tell whether it was a good or bad thing that the boy seemed to, more or less, easily move on from his parents' deaths.

* * *

**039. Painstaking**

The only thing Zuko finally got out of his uncle was, "We're called the White Lotus."

* * *

**040. Unfold**

His uncle's smiled was almost crazed when Arin's punches to a metal door actually wielded a few small dents.

* * *

**041. Wrap**

It was Zuko's eighteenth birthday and his uncle gave him a small amount of fire flakes wrapped in cloth.

* * *

**042. Friend**

"It's okay, Zuko, I'll be your friend."

* * *

** 043. Swift**

The Blue Spirit was now regularly swiping and selling the goods of the nobles, then giving out the money to anyone who looked like they needed it.

* * *

** 044. Seasons**

Four of them passed before the Blue Spirit started spreading stories about the Phoenix King and how he probably killed his wife and maybe killed his own son.

* * *

**045. Need**

The people started to become more unsettled than before.

* * *

**046. Blood**

His uncle was snoring with Arin on the bed (they were synchronized, making the noise ten times more disruptive) and Zuko could see the full moon through the window when he felt someone take hold of his veins and force him out the room, and she stood there at the end of the hall, the old lady who had taken them in, with a snarl, saying, "I saw you heat up your tea, firebender."

* * *

** 047. Ruins**

A Phoenix Empire soldier held Arin by the neck against the side of an inn in the next town and said, "You little earthbenders need to be wiped out," before raising a flame to the boy's face, and before Zuko could stop himself he shouted, "Stop, stop! His life for mine, I'm the banished prince."

* * *

** 048. Homecoming**

His hands were bound behind his back, his hair was cut to a messy shag, and the procession of soldiers surrounding him kept him from lifting his chin up and their armor muffled the noise coming from the Crown Plaza of what used to be his home.

* * *

**049. Back**

"Hello, brother," Azula said, idly twirling a piece of hair around her finger, and Zuko clenched his teeth, throwing a weak punch of fire at her, and Azula tutted, "Nineteen years old and still acting like the little earthbender you oh-so-heroicly saved."

* * *

**050. Consciousness**

They beat him for information he didn't have (_where is your uncle what is he planning where is the little earthbender why did you save him what's wrong with you_) and welcomed the slip of mind that came with one too many hits.

* * *

_XxX_

* * *

(A/N) Probably doesn't make total sense but I hope you enjoyed regardless. I used one of the tables of 50 word prompts on Livejournal. I'm going to be putting up a quick sketch I did of Katara today as I would imagine her clothes to look like in this story, so that'll be on my Tumblr by tomorrow if you'd like to check that out :D

P.S Would anyone like to take a swipe at my age based solely on my writing?


	7. Arc II: back as a stranger

_You can't feel the heat_

_Until you hold your hand over the flame_

_~Satellite, Rise Against_

* * *

Arc II: Ashes on Our Tongues

* * *

-back as a stranger-

* * *

On the exact morning that Katara is seventeen and three months old, the same messenger boy that announced the Avatar's capture now announces (Prince?) Zuko's.

"A traitor of the Fire Nation," the boy reads, still wearing the same muddled red tunic from six months ago, "Zuko handed himself in in exchange for the release of a young orphaned earthbender." The messenger pauses as laughter-infused cheers break out. "The ship containing Zuko, lead by Admiral Oran, will arrive tomorrow."

* * *

"I trust that the Avatar has mastered waterbending by now?" Azula asks, looking first at Aon and then at Katara. The Fire Lord's voice sounds as bored as ever since Katara last saw her when she healed the Fire Lord's blistered cut.

Katara watches the fire behind Azula's throne cast flickering shadows over the Fire Lord's face. It's been nearly eight months since Aang first started training.

"Yes," Aon says finally. A few months ago, Katara would've given herself whiplash with how fast she would've looked sideways at Aon, but she has learned to control her body language now and instead she tilts her head the slightest bit in alarm.

"The Avatar has mastered most of the advanced sets," Katara continues calmly, going along with whatever Aon's doing. "Any training we're doing right now is just perfecting what he already knows."

Azula smiles. "Then our Avatar will be starting his firebending training soon. You are dismissed, Katara. Master Aon, I will be sending a guard for you later. There are some things we need to discuss."

Katara gets down on her hands and knees as a parting bow to Azula while Aon is only required to bend at the waist.

They leave the throne room and once they're a fair distance away, Katara says lowly, "What are you doing?" When she's met by silence she hisses, "I thought we were going to make his training last as long as possible!"

"We can't stall his training anymore," Aon sighs. "They've captured the banished prince-"

"What does the prince being captured have to do with anything?" Katara asks. More silence, so she continues, "What's going to happen to Aang? To me? The Fire Lord and Phoenix King won't need a waterbending master anymore."

"I'll pull some strings, get you sent into the kitchens-"

"General Zhao said they'd originally planned to _sell_ me," Katara whispers. "And you know that. What makes you think he's changed his mind or the Fire Lord's compassionate enough to spare me from that? What do you think will happen to Aang once you and I are gone?" There's no way in hell that Aon will be Aang's teacher when Aon's style is held in distaste by all of the other firebending masters on good terms with the Royal Family.

Aon goes quiet and they soon arrive at the hallway with Katara's room. Aon inclines his head at the guard standing at the beginning of the hall and Katara is left to walk herself the rest of the way, feeling the guard's eyes on her back.

* * *

On homecoming day, Katara is given the choice to stay in either the training chamber (locked up) or in her room (locked up). After the incident with Zhao, all of the kitchen servants are either wary of or simply dislike Katara, and the Fire Lord has forbidden Katara to help out with any of the others because Katara's appearance had, despite the red wine and darkness, caught unwanted attention. Aon had been told by the Fire Lord that several people had either made offers to buy Katara or questioned her place at the palace.

"Can I at least have a pot of water here?" Katara says to the two guards, just as they start to lock up the doors. She doesn't know how she can be expected to stay sane if she's to stay here for five-plus hours with only two silent guards for company.

"We are not authorized-" one of them starts, but Katara cuts him off.

"It wouldn't make a difference," she says firmly. "I obviously can't break out of the chamber."

"You could ambush-"

"Two guards? And then what? Run through a densely occupied palace and knock all of the other hundred-something guards out of the way?"

This gives the guard pause, and after a few moments, he says something quietly into the ear of his partner, who leaves down the hallway.

Ten minutes later, four servants carry in a five-foot wide pot of water. The guards mumble something to each other and start to close the chamber's doors as soon as the last servant has scurried out. Katara smirks when, this time, the guards lock themselves out of the room, leaving Katara completely alone. There's a noisy minute as they put the lock in place and then Katara pulls some of the water from the pot, slipping into one of her warm-up forms. Katara can faintly hear the noise from the celebration, even from here.

She takes breaks from her bending every once in a while to sit down on the floor and idly play with water. Her thoughts drift from the celebration to the young Avatar, to her brother, to the South Pole. She'd spoken to Aon a while back to try and get a message to the South Pole by hawk. It would probably make it, he had said, but there was no telling if the message would just be confiscated, or if it fell into the wrong hands on the way back, or any of the other hundred things that could go wrong. She knows that he had only been humoring her, but she still holds out hope that she can somehow get word back to Sokka. Even if (_when, _she scolds herself half-heartedly) she makes it out of here, she probably won't be able to return to the South Pole, and it would be nice to have a few words from her tribe in the very likely possibility that she never sees them again.

When Katara gets back up, she aims all of her attacks at a single panel of wood, interchangeably pretending that it's Ozai or Azula.

On her next self-appointed break, she thinks of ways she could break out of the palace, right now. The ambush the guards had mentioned could probably work. She'd knock out both the guards or freeze them to the wall, although with the latter she'd have to be insanely fast, and then go into the kitchens or the nearest bathroom and get enough water for a wave. Then she could ride out the wave outside and probably knock out a good amount of nobility; made easier since they're all probably half drunk-

_Someday, _she promises herself, _w__ith the Avatar. _

Katara tries to keep her mind blank as she melts from one form into another, and when she runs out of forms to practice, gives herself little challenges, feeling like a kid. She twists water around herself in a waterspout to try and touch the ceiling, races around the edges of the chamber on a wave, and tries to creep up the walls using ice.

She's created a pentapus-like ring of arms and is trying to see how many tentacles she can add before losing control when Aon bursts into the training chamber. Startled, Katara flings two of nine tentacles at him as one monster tentacle, which Aon, wide-eyed, dissipates with a few bursts of flame.

"I've been deployed by the Fire Lord," Aon says before Katara can ask anything. "I'll be in one of the small Fire Colonies by tomorrow. Azula was serious about starting the Avatar's firebending training and the best firebending teacher four hours from Caldera is being called to the palace."

The water in Katara's control falls with a loud splash and the only thing she manages to say is, "He's supposed to learn earthbending before firebending."

Aon ignores her. "The Fire Lord insists that the palace already has a surplus of servants and that you won't be needed as one. I don't know what's going to happen to you for now."

"So I'm left to whatever the Fire Lord's mood decides is okay for me." She knows she sounds childish but she's _afraid. _

"I couldn't push the matter too much."

"What are you doing here anyway?" Katara asks suddenly.

Aon's eyebrows crease. "I needed to tell you-"

"No, at the palace. In general." Aon's already made it clear that he doesn't agree with most of the Phoenix Empire's policies, or the Fire Lord's policies, but he's also made it clear enough that he's not putting in much effort to oppose any of the policies or change them.

Aon glances back at the entrance, where the guards are waiting. "That's what I- look, Katara, " - he slips something out of his pocket and puts it in Katara's hand- "I will probably never see you again. Find- "

Katara glances down at the object in her palm, frowning. "This is a white -"

"-there's a guard named Ivyn stationed somewhere in the palace, if you ever see her-"

"Captain Jun gave me one of these," Katara says, still looking down at the tile Aon put into her hand, hardly paying attention. "Why-"

"Jun?" Aon looks confused, and then something registers, and he mutters about the general Azula had mentioned before, Iroh.

_An organization? A crazy cross-nation game of Pai Sho? _Katara thinks dully. Aon's saying something else but she's not really listening.

"-not time; Katara, look," and Katara looks up from the tile at him, "the most important thing is that you find the prince and he-"

Katara laughs out loud then, shoving the tile back at Aon. Her mind whirls. Maybe Aon is just a crazy waterbending firebender; how in the hell does any of this make _sense-_

There's a creak as the doors to the chamber start to open. Aon takes Katara by the shoulders and shakes her slightly to get her attention. "You're smart. You'll figure it out. Try to keep an eye on the Avatar. It was a pleasure meeting you, Katara."

Then he pulls her into a hug and Katara hugs him back and then he's walking out the double doors and is gone.

The guards lead Katara to her room after a few minutes, saying that most of the other guards had returned to their normal posts as the celebration has started to die down. Katara goes straight to her bed, reasoning that there'll be plenty of processing time in the morning. After all, she doesn't have a little airbender to teach anymore.

* * *

Katara opens her door the next morning, remnants of sleep still in her eyes, but is jolted fully awake when the two guards standing on the opposite side of the door roughly pull her forward.

"What's happening?"

"Fire Lord Azula has called for you."

Katara is half-dragged through the hallways, tangled hair in her eyes because the guards won't let go of her arms, her clothes probably completely disheveled.

When they finally arrive at the Throne Room's doors - now familiar to Katara, but her heart rate still jumps as she realizes Aon won't be here with her- the guards finally drop her arms. Katara shoots them both stony glares and tucks her ratty hair behind her ear and quickly pulls her tunic into place.

"Hello, Katara."

Azula's voice travels down the room to meet her at the entrance. The doors close behind Katara and she leisurely makes her way down towards Azula, looking straight ahead into the Fire Lord's rather impatient expression.

"So, it appears that we funnily enough don't really have a purposefor you to stay here anymore, waterbender. Do you have any suggestions as to what I should do with you now?"

"I'm willing to take on any job within reason, my Lord," Katara says coolly. She can't quite tear her eyes away from those flames.

"And what is _within reason_ for you?"

By the sound of her voice, it seems like Azula already has something in mind (doesn't she always?), but Katara says anyway, "The kitchens, the stables, cleaning around the palace; anything like that, really."

Something seems to click and Azula sort of nods and waves her hand lazily, dismissing Katara. Katara thinks of Aang and prays to Tui and La that whatever her assignment is, it's close to the boy.

* * *

"Second time in 24 hours," Katara mutters under her breath. Her arms are again gripped tightly by two guards, and this time, she's blindfolded. She guesses that it's around two in the morning and wonders what could've possessed the Fire Lord to call for her in the middle of the night. Katara is led down several flights of stairs into hallways made of metal that echo with each footstep.

"Take her blindfold off."

The black cloth falls away and Katara is in a prison cell.

The cell is one in a row of at least ten, but all of the other cells are completely empty. The whole room seems to be forged of solid metal. The only people in the whole of this particular prison wing (Aon had mentioned that there are at least twenty like this, all underground) are the Fire Lord, the two guards breathing down Katara's neck, and the person in the corner of the cell, lying face down with a bloodied back and tattered clothes.

"There's water behind you. Heal him," Azula says snappily, sounding impatient and offering zero explanation of what the hell is happening. Katara's eyebrows crease and she feels more than a little bit of repulsion towards the Fire Lord but she doesn't ask any questions.

"I'll need him to be laid out straight," Katara says, turning to the two pots of water in the cell. Azula barks out at the guards and they pick up the man, who doesn't react at all. Out cold.

When he's being lifted, the man's head lolls to the side and Katara inhales sharply when she sees the pink scar marring the side of his face.

"Yes, yes, Zuzu's not held in esteem for his looks." Azula's eyeroll can practically be heard.

Katara's eye widen. Somehow she doesn't think that the gashes on the prince's back are from before his arrival in the palace. Only a day in the Fire Nation and Azula's already had her brother knocked unconscious?

Katara kneels by his side and touches the water to his back. There's no reaction from the prince. She runs the water gently over his flesh once, just to clear off all of the blood, and bends the pinkish water into one of the pots before taking a quick second to assess the extent of the damage.

"I don't think I can heal him fully," she says, wincing inwardly as she takes in the deep cuts and blistered and charred skin, not unlike that cut of Azula's she'd healed so long ago.

"As long as he doesn't die."

Katara takes the water from the other pot and lets it form a glove around each of her hands. She starts at the biggest cut, stretching from the nape of his neck to the small of his back, and prods the water to glow blue. Azula looks on intently for a few minutes before starting to pace in the cell and the guards watch, silent as ever. The cut slowly closes up and then Katara moves onto the next, then the next, then the next, until the water is too soiled to do any more good.

"I need more water."

Azula walks back over. She quickly runs her eyes over his back and says, dismissively, "That's good enough." She then gestures for the guards to take Katara away.

* * *

She returns to the prince's cell again the next day, and the next, with him knocked out cold each time with new cuts to heal. There's the same amount of water for Katara to use each time, and although she tries her best, she can never quite fully stitch and sooth the skin, which seems to be Azula's goal. The bruises and gashes build on each other and mottle the prince's flesh in pinks and purples.

The third time she is called down (twice in the same day), Katara is healing a particularly bad cut and the prince cries out as she pulls the water out of the gash, his back arcing up even in his unconsciousness. Katara knows it's stupid to say anything, but she still looks up at the admiral who has replaced Azula in these healing seasons and says, "I _need _more water. His injuries are too-"

"Did the Fire Lord not make it clear that you are only to use the water you are given?" he asks sharply.

"Yes, however-"

"Is it clear?"

"Yes, sir." Katara grits her teeth and ducks her head again.

_It's been easy enough to find the prince, Aon, _Katara thinks bitterly, _too bad his sister is hellbent on keeping him half-dead. _

Katara soothes as much of the skin as she can and bends the dirtied water back into the pots. The admiral looks down at the prince's back, surprise momentarily flitting in his eyes.

"Maybe I should've kept some of those waterbenders after all," he says with a chuckle. Katara stands up slowly. "Healing is rather useful; too bad I only got to see their fighting."

Katara glares at the man. He smiles back, the limp body of the prince the only space between them. "Oh, I seem to have forgotten to introduce myself," he says, a sickly sweet smile on his face. He holds out a hand mockingly that Katara has to fight to not slap away. "I'm Admiral Kain, I'm sure you've heard of me?"

Katara has and her blood starts to boil upon the realization but instead she says a firm, "No, I don't believe I have."

The admiral sees through her and chuckles. "The head of the Northern Raids? Of course you've heard of _those._"

Silence.

"I'm finished with the prince."

The admiral slowly smiles again. "He's not the prince anymore, waterbender, or has that also escaped you?"

"I'm finished with Zuko," she amends bitingly, the name foreign on her tongue.

"Very well," Admiral Kain says, and mumbles something to the two guards, who then step forward to blindfold Katara. "We have another project for you."

Katara is led a short distance into another prison cell wing. This one is even smaller than the one with the prince, and two of the cells are occupied. In one of them is a young woman with raggedly cut, shoulder-length brown hair, who is fully conscious with no apparent injuries, and in the other lies a young man, who can't be more than a year older than Katara.

As they edge closer to the cells, Katara realizes that the girl's eyes are red and puffy and there are dried trails of tears on her cheeks. The girl watches with hollow amber eyes the little group of guards, admiral, and waterbender approach. The admiral looks down at the girl in disgust.

"Damn earth rebels kids," he spits, and then turns to Katara, "Heal the boy."

The guards open the boy's cell. There's already a pot of water waiting for her and she kneels by the young man, stitching skin back together and lightening bruises. The girl watches Katara with parts suspicion, disgust and relief in her eyes.

"You're with them," she says hoarsely. Katara doesn't acknowledge her and continues to move the water over the boy's gashes. The girl continues,"They destroyed your home and you-"

"Quiet," Kain barks at the girl. She opens her mouth to say something more but then decides against it and clenches her teeth, setting her mouth into an angry grimace. Five, ten silent minutes pass.

"I'm done," Katara says quietly. All of the cuts are at least halfway healed and the bruises are gone, but she feels too light-headed to do anything more.

The angry amber-eyed girl mumbles, "Thank you," as Katara gets up, soft so that the sound only reaches the waterbender's ears. It sounds like someone is forcing her to utter the words. Amber. A Fire Nation feature on an earth girl.

Katara shoots a thin smile at the girl. They'll only tear the skin back open.

Admiral Kain gestures at the guards and Katara is blindfolded again. _  
_

Another quick walk later they're in another prison cell wing, this one with six cells occupied, but only one man needing healing. Katara's stomach sinks. Is this what she is now? A torture device? Combined with the headache she feels coming on she's hit with a wave of nausea, but forces herself forward into the man's cell. He seems to be middle-aged, and he's curled up on his side in the fetal position, his back relentlessly burned. No cuts.

By the time Katara has made the swelling and blisters go down enough that healthy skin peeks through, she can barely stay up on her feet. Admiral Kain mutters something and Katara's eyes are covered. When she can see again, they're at the door to her room. Katara pushes open the door and stumbles towards the bathroom. She turns the knobs on the sink, needing some water to splash on her face and wash out the images of the prisoners' wounds.

Nothing comes out.

Katara curses and tries twisting them the other way, and then back again, and then gives up and dizzily makes her way back into the room. She looks around with bleary eyes. There's a single glass of water on the low table. She sits down unsteadily on the floor and takes small sips until half the glass is gone. With the rest, she coats the tips of her fingers in water and presses them to her temples, managing to get the water to glow the faintest bit with healing.

* * *

Katara knows there's something wrong when a smiling Aang and smiling Azula greet her in the morning.

* * *

_XxX_

* * *

(A/N)

Hope you guys enjoyed! Sorry for the long wait compared to the other chapters; this was one of those chapters that had to be rewritten about a million times before it sounded right.

I'm always, _always _looking to improve my writing, so if you guys see anything I could do better (characterization, description, sentence structure, anything) _please _don't hesitate to criticize.


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